This open access book utilizes new data to thoroughly analyze the main factors currently shaping the African housing market. Some of these factors include the supply and demand for housing finance, land tenure security issues, construction cost conundrum, infrastructure provision, and low-cost housing alternatives. Through detailed analysis, the authors investigate the political economy surrounding the continent’s housing market and the constraints that behind-the-scenes policy makers need to address in their attempts to provide affordable housing for the majority in need. With Africa’s urban population growing rapidly, this study highlights how broad demographic shifts and rapid urbanization are placing enormous pressure on the limited infrastructure in many cities and stretching the economic and social fabric of municipalities to their breaking point. But beyond providing a snapshot of the present conditions of the African housing market, the book offers recommendations and actionable measures for policy makers and other stakeholders on how best to provide affordable housing and alleviate Africa’s housing deficit. This work will be of particular interest to practitioners, non-governmental organizations, private sector actors, students and researchers of economic policy, international development, and urban development.

This book brings together a broad range of research that interrogates how real estate market analysis, finance, planning, and investment for residential and commercial developments across the African continent are undertaken. In the past two decades, African real estate markets have rapidly matured, creating the conditions for new investment opportunities which has increased the demand for a deeper understanding of the commercial and residential markets across the continent. The chapters consider issues that pertain to formal real estate markets and the critical relationship between formal and informal property markets on the continent. With contributing authors from South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania, the book considers the achievements of African real estate markets while also highlighting the complex central themes such as underdeveloped land tenure arrangements, the availability of finance in both the commercial and residential sectors, rapidly growing urban areas, and inadequate professional skills. This book is essential reading for students in real estate, land management, planning, finance, development, and economics programs who need to understand the nuances of markets in the African context. Investors and policy makers will learn a lot reading this book too.

This book brings together a broad range of research that interrogates how real estate market analysis, finance, planning, and investment for residential and commercial developments across the African continent are undertaken. In the past two decades, African real estate markets have rapidly matured, creating the conditions for new investment opportunities which has increased the demand for a deeper understanding of the commercial and residential markets across the continent. The chapters consider issues that pertain to formal real estate markets and the critical relationship between formal and informal property markets on the continent. With contributing authors from South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania, the book considers the achievements of African real estate markets while also highlighting the complex central themes such as underdeveloped land tenure arrangements, the availability of finance in both the commercial and residential sectors, rapidly growing urban areas, and inadequate professional skills. This book is essential reading for students in real estate, land management, planning, finance, development, and economics programs who need to understand the nuances of markets in the African context. Investors and policy makers will learn a lot reading this book too.

This open access book utilizes new data to thoroughly analyze the main factors currently shaping the African housing market. Some of these factors include the supply and demand for housing finance, land tenure security issues, construction cost conundrum, infrastructure provision, and low-cost housing alternatives. Through detailed analysis, the authors investigate the political economy surrounding the continent's housing market and the constraints that behind-the-scenes policy makers need to address in their attempts to provide affordable housing for the majority in need. With Africa's urban population growing rapidly, this study highlights how broad demographic shifts and rapid urbanization are placing enormous pressure on the limited infrastructure in many cities and stretching the economic and social fabric of municipalities to their breaking point. But beyond providing a snapshot of the present conditions of the African housing market, the book offers recommendations and actionable measures for policy makers and other stakeholders on how best to provide affordable housing and alleviate Africa's housing deficit. This work will be of particular interest to practitioners, non-governmental organizations, private sector actors, students and researchers of economic policy, international development, and urban development. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.

This open access book utilizes new data to thoroughly analyze the main factors currently shaping the African housing market. Some of these factors include the supply and demand for housing finance, land tenure security issues, construction cost conundrum, infrastructure provision, and low-cost housing alternatives. Through detailed analysis, the authors investigate the political economy surrounding the continent's housing market and the constraints that behind-the-scenes policy makers need to address in their attempts to provide affordable housing for the majority in need. With Africa's urban population growing rapidly, this study highlights how broad demographic shifts and rapid urbanization are placing enormous pressure on the limited infrastructure in many cities and stretching the economic and social fabric of municipalities to their breaking point. But beyond providing a snapshot of the present conditions of the African housing market, the book offers recommendations and actionable measures for policy makers and other stakeholders on how best to provide affordable housing and alleviate Africa's housing deficit. This work will be of particular interest to practitioners, non-governmental organizations, private sector actors, students and researchers of economic policy, international development, and urban development.

This book assesses the effects of spatially concentrated programs for housing and neighborhood improvement. These programs provide direct assistance to low-income property owners in an attempt to arrest neighborhood decline and encourage revitalization. The authors used the Harvard Urban Development Simulation Model (HUDS) in evaluating these programs. HUDS, a large-scale computer model, represents the process of housing rehabilitation, the production and consumption of housing services, household moving decisions, and other determinant of neighborhood change. The model simulates the behavior of approximately 80,000 individual households in two hundred residential neighborhoods of various quality levels. Unlike more aggregate models of urban development, HUDS has the capacity to identify how specific housing policies affect individual households as well as particular neighborhoods. Since program evaluations are no better than the models on which they are based, the authors provide sufficient detail to permit those readers primarily interested in the policy analysis to assess the methodology and to understandhow the policies are represented in the model; a more technical discussion of the model is then presented in appendixes. Although the simulations focus on policies that induce central-city property owners to upgrade their properties and thus stimulate revitalization, many of the authors' findings are relevant to larger issues of urban development. For example, the analysis of how housing rehabilitation subsidies affect the investment behavior of nonsubsidized property owners provides insights about the link between initial upgrading and sustained neighborhood improvement. The analysis also demonstrates how differences in location, household, and housing stock characteristics affect a particular neighborhood's responsiveness to a common policy initiative.

This book seeks to fill the information gap on a key emerging real estate market and demystify the perception that the market in Ghana and indeed, across sub-Saharan Africa is opaque. Drawing on decades of experience from within the market, the author presents a detailed examination of the real estate market in Ghana and its existing regulatory framework. In doing so, he provides a justification for its relevance in the subregion. It focuses on seven thematic areas – land administration, legal perspectives, market dynamics, investment potentials, market competitiveness, valuation and compensation. This book will be a useful resource for students, academia, practitioners, real estate developers, investors and professional advisors such as valuers, surveyors, lawyers, accountants, bankers, architects, planners and engineers. An important feature of this book is the way in which chapters are self-contained, and yet follow logically one from another. With this approach, readers can choose a reading path appropriate to their own specific needs without a loss of continuity.